Red Hat awarded for innovation

  • Published
  • By Mitch Shaw
  • 75th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
On May 9, Hill Air Force Base took home two prizes at the first annual Red Hat Innovation Awards for outstanding achievement in innovation.

Hill AFB won the award for innovation in government and was also chosen as Red Hat's Innovators of the Year.

Project Bonfire, as the mission was named, was selected for its use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux computer software to develop a fast, cost-effective, secure and reliable computing system.

The system eliminated crashes, simplified its previous complicated operating environment, reduced the load time of the base's largest applications from 12 to three hours and amounted to just two percent of the cost of the previous operating system, saving millions of dollars for Hill AFB.

"This is the Bonfire Team's award," said Mike Jolley, Ogden Air Logistics Center information management. "We had a lot of fantastic people who were vital to our success. This award is just recognition for the great work people are doing for cost reduction, increased security, reliability and availability."

According to Linda Field, OO-ALC, the mission of Project Bonfire was to create a very reliable, consistent and sustainable environment to support customers and maintain affordable costs.

"The mission was to create a grid of computing capacity much like the electricity grid used by utility companies," she said. "The computing power is always on and is directed to the customer that needs the resources. We've been successful in this effort and now have a framework for success in the future."

Red Hat Innovation Award Judge Michael Tiemann, said Hill AFB should be proud of its win.

"The submissions in each category displayed original, cunning work with Red Hat Solutions that will serve as inspiration to other potential and existing customers," he said. "Hill AFB deserves to be congratulated for their captivating story of technical achievement."